{"id":450,"date":"2020-04-26T23:25:13","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T21:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.menschenrechte.org\/blog\/?p=450"},"modified":"2020-12-31T09:23:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T08:23:38","slug":"dignified-housing-in-times-of-a-pandemic-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.menschenrechte.org\/blog\/dignified-housing-in-times-of-a-pandemic-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Dignified housing (in times of a pandemic and beyond)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To prevent the pandemic from further spreading, governments in recent weeks started to enforce lockdowns and ordered people to #stayhome<\/em> or #quedateencasa<\/em>. All of a sudden, we have become involuntarily confined to our home, regardless of its characteristics, number of inhabitants, or location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few moments in\ncontemporary history have made us appreciate so acutely what it means to have\ngood quality housing. Now that we are all mandated to remain within our homes,\nwe cannot escape, go out to work, to take a walk, to have a coffee, to exercise,\nto play in the park, to read on a bench. All activities have to take place\nwithin these four walls, in constant proximity to those whom we share our home\nwith or in absolute solitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has never been more imperative to reflect on the human right to adequate housing<\/a> (set out in Article 25.1 of the Declaration of Human Rights<\/a>), what \u201cadequate housing\u201d<\/em> really is and how much it contributes in terms of quality of life; what it means to have a spacious and well-proportioned home surrounded by nature, with natural light, good ventilation and an outdoor space, a balcony, a garden or a roof terrace; and what a privilege it still is to live like this in the twenty-first century!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A closer look at our cities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A brief examination of our cities reveals that there is a vast amount of substandard housing: homes without electricity; windows overlooking tiny interior courtyards; homes shared by people who take turns between working and sleeping; overcrowded homes without privacy for any inhabitant; poor-quality housing, where any sound from the neighbours can be heard; or, as Juan Jos\u00e9 Mill\u00e1s<\/a> describes them, „houses with fewer square meters than the national flags that fly on the facades of the official buildings.“<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, the\nsituation is even more alarming. In Lima, for example, about a third of\nhouseholds live in high or extreme poverty. Makeshift dwellings are made of\nlightweight materials. The inhabitants are not protected from the cold or heat\nand left exposed to the humidity constantly present in the atmosphere of Peru’s\ncapital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These dwellings accommodate families like the Cotrina Vigos. Their home sits on the slopes of a damp hill outside the capital. In this precariously built house of only 9square metres, with no running water or even enough space to set up a table, with a dirt floor and a single window opening onto an open garbage dump, they must experience the current confinement as torture, locked in a place they just want to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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